NO SLOWDOWN IN SCOOTER BOOM
Total soon might hit 10,500; e-bikes could be on way
If electric scooters seem to crowd every intersection in central San Antonio now, wait a couple of weeks. More are on the way. And they’ll be joined by their cousin, the electric bicycle. Two companies, JUMP and Spin, have applied to operate in the city, which would add to the four already here. The number of rental scooters — about 8,000 are permitted now — could grow to 10,500 by the end of the month.
Compare that with the 3,000 here two months ago, when the city started to regulate them. In November alone, people took 300,000 scooter rides.
The boom is showing up in other ways: more complaints, more injuries and, in the offing, more enforcement of regulations for the companies and riders.
Since Oct. 11, when a six-month pilot program started, 122 complaint calls about scooters have come in to the city’s 311 service center, Assistant City Manager Lori Houston said. Most were from irate pedestrians. That total doesn’t include calls people made to the companies directly.
More than 70 scooter-related injuries, to riders and pedestrians, have been reported to the Fire Department since July. That’s likely an undercount. The tally involves only instances when an ambulance was called and someone was transported to a hospital, a fire official said.
The city plans more rider safety education and stepped-up enforcement of regulations, tapping the $130,000 collected from scooter companies, Houston said. It is hiring four enforcement workers, who will be authorized to cite companies that park scooters illegally in locations such as the River Walk and Alamo Plaza, where riding also is banned.
The city can confiscate and impound scooters — and charge a $50 retrieval fee — Houston said, but so far none has been.
Headaches for pedestrians
Whether stricter enforcement of parking and riding rules will satisfy scooter critics remains to be seen.
If the city approves JUMP’s application, as expected, the company will offer electric bicycles as well as scooters for rent. Like scooters, the bikes will be dockless, meaning they can be parked anywhere it is legal.
When Troy McCormick, a bartender at the Bombay Bicycle Club, a restaurant near the San Antonio Zoo, saw a scooter company contract worker line up about 10 scooters on the sidewalk in front of the entrance to the restaurant, he spoke up.
“I said, ‘Hey man, we don’t need these many scooters, we don’t want them,’ ” he said. “I told him to put them somewhere else, like the side of the building. He said this is where he was told to drop them, and that sidewalks are city property.”
Sidewalks are public property, so the restaurant can’t dictate what happens there, but Houston confirmed that a scooter obstructing the sidewalk or an entrance is illegal.
A month ago, McCormick, 43, was leaving a downtown restaurant when two scooter riders almost ran into him. He said plans to add dockless e-bikes into the urban mix could make the situation worse.
“I’ve ridden scooters and I don’t have a problem with them,” McCormick said. “They’re fun. But they present a real tripping liability on sidewalks. What if you’re in a wheelchair and can’t go around them?”
Lucia Romano, an attorney with Disability Rights Texas, said her group has yet to receive a complaint from anyone with a disability who has struggled with scooters.
“Mostly we get calls from the media,” she said. Still, the group is researching the issue, she said. Provided a copy of the San Antonio ordinance, Romano said it seemed to abide by all American Disability Act requirements.
“The key will be whether people actually follow these rules,” she said.
The pilot program, Houston said, is a way for the city to test how to balance pedestrian and rider safety while embracing a new mode of transportation that has proved attractive to tourists and young people.
“These initial ‘soft touch’ regulations are aimed to help us better understand the benefits and implications” of scooters, she said.
Gretchen Mayes, 65, a retired Army emergency room nurse who lives near downtown with her husband, said the city’s soft approach to regulating scooters is “a joke.”
“We visited the River Walk after Thanksgiving, and there were scooters everywhere,” she said. “No one is following the rules that I can see. No one wears helmets. As an ER nurse, all I can think of is head injuries.” The ordinance recommends — but doesn’t require — that riders wear helmets.
When a worker for scooter company Lime parked several by the entrance to their condo on Lexington Avenue, Mayes’ husband emailed the company and asked it to park the scooters elsewhere. “A couple of days later they were gone,” she said. “But then they came back.”
Mayes said she was shocked recently to see a man riding a scooter with a small child in front of him and an older child on the back. Not long ago, a scooter rider “clipped” her when he passed, giving her a bruise on her arm.
“You think it’s bad now, just wait until Fiesta,” she said. “Can you imagine scooters and dockless bike riders mixing in with the parades?”
San Antonio’s regulations attempt to govern rider behavior: Always yield to pedestrians, use bike lanes when available, don’t leave the scooter in the right of way and so on.
So far, police officers haven’t issued any tickets to riders, but they’ve issued lots of warnings, Houston said.
San Antonio’s suburban cities are also wrestling with scooters.
“The big problem is how (riders) interact with traffic, how they behave on sidewalks and just the unregulated nature of it all,” said Mark Browne, city manager of Alamo Heights. “On any given day, there are about 40 to 80 scooters operating.”
Alamo Heights has no scooter ordinance but plans to craft one, he said, using the San Antonio ordinance as a model.
“We’re not opposed to scooters, we’re not getting ready to outlaw them,” he said. “But we have to do some type of regulation.”
Celia DeLeon, city manager of Olmos Park, said the topic of escooters — including a possible ban — is on the agenda for that suburb’s council meeting Dec. 20.
“We’ve had just a handful of reported injuries, but people have to have access to sidewalks,” she said.
Scooter fans say the devices are more good than bad. They’ve become an essential convenience to getting around downtown and elsewhere, especially the “first mile, last mile” problem — when a distance is too far to walk but too short to drive. Then there’s the whole city image issue.
“We want to be known as a city that is innovative, that leans forward into these new solutions,” said David Heard, CEO of Tech Bloc, which focuses on economic and other development in San Antonio. “We want to be seen as a place where young professionals and creative class workers view us as a city of choice, not as a backwater or late adopter.”
Get rid of or severely restrict scooters, he said, and it will “confirm every bad stereotype of San Antonio, which we’re trying to overcome.”